Shake-up at DOC continues: chief of staff Ronay gone

The exodus following the ouster of former Department of Corrections Secretary Ed Buss continued this week: Buss’s chief of staff Dan Ronay quit his $120,000-a-year job yesterday.

The department’s spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said new DOC chief Ken Tucker accepted Ronay’s resignation yesterday, but did not say whether he was asked to step down.

Ronay was one of more than a dozen staffers Buss brought with him from Indiana, where Buss served as corrections chief. Gov. Rick Scott forced Buss to resign in August in the midst of a prison privatization effort ordered by the legislature that a Tallahassee judge recently ruled was unconstitutional because it was included in the budget instead of in a stand-alone bill.

Buss was fired late in August but will remain on the state payroll earning $145,000 until October to help with the transition, according to Scott’s office.